Combined spd pedals.

[Jamesh]

What pedals do you guys recommend for combined SPD pedals

Budget £30

wellgo coo2

Exustar E-PM818

Decathlon spd 500

For my commuter bike

Cheers James

[rotavator]

May I suggest that you check the spelling of the title?

[reohn2]

.

[gazza_d]

Shimano M324 pedals are really good although a little over budget and would be well worth stretching too. I've had a pair for years now.

I have some touring platform pedals as well (Shimano A530) which are great in the dry but the aluminium platform is really slippy in the winter. Just something to be aware of if you consider something similar.

[whoof]

I bought a nice pair from Gomorrah.

[Jamesh]

I bought a nice pair from Gomorrah.

Ok title changed!!

Cheers James

[Jdsk]

I have Wellgo C002 on my tourer.

They're OK.

Jonathan

PS: IIRC there's some important distinction about serviceability.

[rogerzilla]

I don't like M324s. They're heavy, the huge cages catch on things in the shed and they are awful to service. You need a concentric socket tool (TL-PD33) that costs as much as the pedals, and placing the balls for the inner race would try the patience of a brain surgeon. In daily use, they develop play within a year and need overhaul.

Best to bite the bullet and get walkable SPD shoes. Some SPDs have a big enough platform that they are usable with other shoes.

[Brucey]

Wellgo C002 are loosely SPD compatible but don't have a 'kicker ramp' in the binding. This means that like a lot of SPD-ish pedals they can hang on to a worn cleat and not release it cleanly. The bearings are DU bushing/cartridge. The DU bushing is relatively high drag and will only last if it is regularly greased.

Exustar E-PM818 has similar bindings but (allegedly) has ball bearings in the pedal. I'd suppose they mean cup and cone bearings in which case they should be adjustable, but I have not seen inside these pedals to know this for sure.

The Decathlon BTwin MTB semi-automatic 500 pedals again have SPD-ish bindings with no kicker ramp and bearings of an unspecified nature. They are also out of stock online, so unless you have some in your local store, you are out of luck.

My suggestion; unless you are going to be doing a lot of riding on the flat side, you might be better off with Shimano PD-M520 fitted with the flat clip-in converters on one side (eg shimano SM-PD22, or BBB BPD-90), and aim to use SPD shoes more of the time.

If you are in it for the long haul, PD-M324 are a well-proven and durable pedal, but you will need a more expensive tool to adjust the bearings than with PD-M520. The tool for PD-M520 costs about £2 and the one for PD-M324 is more like £30.

Some users stave off having to overhaul any of these pedals (except PD-M520 perhaps) for years by occasionally removing the dustcap and thumbing grease into the pedal until it oozes out the other end.

cheers

[Steve O'C]

I have some touring platform pedals as well (Shimano A530) which are great in the dry but the aluminium platform is really slippy in the winter. Just something to be aware of if you consider something similar.

I have the same pedals and have also found them slippy in the wet. Looks like this model has been replaced by Shimano PD-EH500 which has some pins on the flat side so should be grippier.

Another thig to take in to account is that the height of the platform above the spindle varies between the flat and SPD side (at least it does on the A530). Not much but noticeable and might irritate you.

Steve

[zenitb]

+1 for the Shimano PD-M324 pedals. I know they are £10 over your budget but these are rugged, reliable pedals. I agree with Brucey above where he says if you are in for the "long haul" these are the ones to get. Pre-covid I daily cycle commuted on these for six out of seven years and found them solidly reliable.

They also have some "not so obvious" features that, over time, you come to value

1. The SPD/Flat sides "hang" in a reliable orientation. So if you are using flat shoes you can place your feet on the pedals from the front of the pedal "hang" and if you have SPD shoes you can clip in from the rear of the "hang". This really mitigates the "wrong side of the pedal" issue and becomes instinctive after a while. Not a feature you will find mentioned in the product blurb of course.

2. Also these are evolved "second generation" hybrid pedals from Shimano. The outer bearing count of these pedals has been beefed up from the predecessor PD-M323 pedal (which I also have). The finish has also been made more corrosion resistant over the PD-M323s. These are not "gone tomorrow" products - they have been evolved and improved over the last 25 years and are in daily use by many cyclists.

Rogerzilla's caveats on servicing them ARE valid - if you do end up having to service them there is the issue of the expensive "special tool" required to tighten the locknuts - which you have to file the edges off for it to work. And I agree placing the balls in the inner bearings can be tricky - I have a workaround for that though which works for me (involving a thin paintbrush handle and dobs of grease) so I don't find that an issue myself. Frankly if you ever get them to that stage the distance you will have cycled will probably have paid for the special tool anyway versus some badly sealed, badly engineered throw away alternative. I also like the sound of Brucey's simplified method of simply thumbing grease through the pedal until it comes out the other side. I will have to give that a go at some point.

Shimano do some "easier to service" hybrid pedals if the servicing above sounds like an issue - both these listed below use the £2 "pastry cutter" special tool and if servicing is ever needed its really simple.

PD-A530 - Out of production but maybe still around. My daughter liked the smooth looks of the Shimano PD-A530 pedal but as Steve O'C has said she found the "flat" side is slippy/lethal in the wet (wheras the cage of the PD-M324 seems to be grippy in all conditions .. even snow )

PD-EH500 - As Steve O'C says above Shimano have replaced the PD-A530 with the new Shimano PD-EH500 with added adjustable pins on the flat side. Not tried them but they might be a solution going forward ?

[Brucey]

Worth mentioning that the beefed up outer bearing in PD-M324 is only really of any value to

a) those who use the flat side of the pedal and
b) don't position their foot centrally over the pedal, but rather favour the outside edge of the pedal.

The loads are (or should be) rather more symmetrically disposed on the pedal bearings when using the SPD side of the pedal, in which case there is no extra loading on the outer bearing and the bearings can be the same size as one another as they are for nearly all SPD pedals.

cheers

[PeterBL]

I like the Shimano PD-T421. Easy to clip in and out of, serviceable bearings, built-in reflectors. The platform is sticky enough for me, but without metal pins digging into your soles.

I had som cheaper ones previously (maybe Exustar), but the bearings couldn't be greased so they didn't last.

If money wasn't an object, I would look at the PD-T8000.

[Brucey]

as noted above the beefed up outer bearing in PD-M324 is needed for some flat side users.

The same argument also applies to other pedals too, such as PD-T8000



only here the bearings are identical to one another and less than an inch apart too. This arrangement breeds premature bearing wear if you load up the pedal off-centre. This is a typical SPD pedal spindle with the shimano 'cartridge' system (which is actually a miniature cup and cone setup);



this arrangement (with small variations) is used in about 90% of all shimano pedals, including most 'road bike' pedals with three-bolt cleats and flat pedals such as PD-MX30 and PD-MX80 too. The latter pedals are prone to seeing off-centre loads and in these models the bearings are (IME) more likely to wear out prematurely. Same goes for combination pedals with the same bearings, if you use the flat side in the way indicated. In this case PD-M324 is probably a better choice, despite the expensive tool etc.

cheers

[Brucey]

FWIW I happened to be passing by Decathlon earlier today so I took a look at the BTwin pedals in question.

In the flesh they looked OK, and to my surprise there are 'kicker ramps' of a kind in the binding, so they may be not as bad as many other SPD-ish pedals in that respect. However there is good and bad to report regarding the pedal bearings;

good; they are evidently cup and cone bearings, almost certainly adjustable.
bad; they are tiny in size and
double bad; they are set super-tight, such that it is quite difficult to turn the spindles, and it feels terrible when you do so.

Other BTwin pedals were built differently, mostly with a DU bushing inside them I would have said.

Hung next to these was a blister pack with PD-M324 pedals/cleats inside, for £10 more. Another with PD-M520 inside, for £25.

IMHO the shimano pedals are pretty much a no-brainer; they are smoother, have properly engineered bearings that last so much longer and you can buy spare parts if necessary. The others are just throwaway items by comparison. They would have to be much cheaper (or much better than they are) before they had any chance of getting my vote.

cheer